Kaufman should have taken to heart what one of the characters in ''Windermere" declares: ''People are either charming or tedious." The same is true of productions of Wilde's plays, and this one is not charming.
In fact, this ''Windermere" plays more like Henrik Ibsen than Wilde. The story of Mrs. Erlynne, a mother contriving to reconnect with her daughter, it comes across here like ''Hedda Gabler" but with more wit. Jean Smart certainly plays Mrs. Erlynne, the ''loose" woman, as if she's auditioning for the role of the doomed Hedda. Samantha Soule and Corey Brill as the Windermeres are the kind of humorless moralists one finds everywhere in Ibsen.
It is true that Wilde and Ibsen exposed the hypocrisy of middle- and upper-class morality, but to turn Wilde into Ibsen is like Woody Allen trying to be Ingmar Bergman. Why try to be something one isn't?
A few actors actually seem like they're in a Wilde play -- notably Adam Rothenberg as Lord Darlington, who is trying to get Lady Windermere to leave her drip of a husband. Rothenberg knows how to deliver a Wilde-ism like a naughty epigram rather than a moralistic tsk-tsking.
So do Derek Lucci as Parker the butler, Benjamin Walker as a member of Darlington's entourage, and American Repertory Theatre alumnus Jack Willis -- despite being too huffy -- as Mrs. Erlynne's suitor. Neil Patel's sets and Kaye Voyce's costumes, color-coordinated wigs and gowns, are an eyeful.
But all that doesn't get you very far into the iconoclastic world of Wilde. Granted, this was his first success and not as sure-footed as ''The Importance of Being Earnest" or ''An Ideal Husband."
But in all Wilde's work, he wanted to go beyond conventional norms of good and evil, and humor was the key to getting away with it. Kaufman doesn't get the joke.
This is the first production in a main-stage season in which Rees celebrates Anglo-Irish playwriting, with Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard on the way, followed by a Yank, William Inge. Rees is going to need better productions if he's going to make his colleagues across the pond come to life.
